


Goodbye; Hello

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [25]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen, not actually RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: any. any. Where do we go from here? Set in Enemy at the Gate, including some dialogue straight from that episode. John Sheppard is willing to sacrifice himself for his home planet. Joe Flanigan reaches out to his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye; Hello

When John saw the smoke rising from what used to be Area 51, he knew the truth before Carter said it. The chair had been destroyed. Immediately the physicist began plotting. There was still a way to destroy the ship. The others broke into squabbles about the condition of his 302, how much fuel he had left, what he'd have to do to make sure the hive ship wouldn't detect him. If he fired up too early, they'd send darts, and he'd die. If he fired up too late, Earth would be slaughtered, and then he would die. Either way, he was going to die. He might as well die usefully.  
  
So he told Carter his plan - _their_ plan.  
  
"John, I can't ask you to do that." Carter sounded like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.  
  
"Well, you're not asking, I'm volunteering." John could feel the weight of a hundred imprints at the edges of his mind. They were all saying goodbye to each other. "Look, without that chair, Earth is basically defenseless, right?"  
  
Carter's silence was all the answer he needed.  
  
"Commencing radio silence. Sheppard out."

*

The imprints were quiet while they hovered in space, waiting for the hive ship to come into range. Usually when he flew, most of them tagged along just behind his consciousness, thrilled with the speed and the force and the fact that they got to be fighter pilots (Topher had had a thing for _Top Gun_ , and most of the imprints loved flying).  
  
But they fell silent when he fired up the engines once more. "It's time to get moving." He said it for them as much as for himself.  
  
Once inside the dart bay, John started arming the warhead, setting a timer. "Stargate Command, this is Sheppard. Come in."  
  
Carter's voice was welcome. "Sheppard, where are you?"  
  
"I made it inside. Look, I don't have much time before this place is swarming with Wraith, so I'm arming the nuke."  
  
"John -"  
  
"Do me a favor. That thing I asked you to do. Send it." He'd given her a journal, one Joe had filled over his three and a half years in Pegasus. It was addressed to his mother. It was the best goodbye John could offer under the circumstances.  
  
Carter murmured an order to a marine, and then she said, "It's done."  
  
"And when Atlantis shows up," he added, "tell them I said goodbye."  
  
Carter was silent. One by one, the imprints started saying goodbye to him. Joe said, _Thank you._  
  
And then Rodney's voice burst over his radio, and the imprints cheered.

*

Amelia Flanigan was terribly confused when a man in a fancy blue Air Force uniform knocked on her door and gave her a package. He admitted he didn't know what was in it, just that he'd been ordered to deliver it. He wished her a good day and departed from her doorstep.

Amelia turned the package over in her hands, and her heart crawled into her throat. She'd know her son's handwriting anywhere. She closed the door and rushed into the kitchen, fumbled through the drawers for pair of scissors to cut the brown wrapping paper away (she was careful not to cut through his neat cursive where he'd written her name and address). She hadn't believed those Stanford administrators or those fancy lawyers from Joe's rich friend's family. Her boy hadn't disappeared during spring break in Mexico. Something had happened to him, and she was going to keep searching for him.  
  
When she opened the notebook, there was a letter at the front.  
  
_Mom, Take this to Professor Charles Eppes at Cal Tech. He'll know what to do with it. I've missed you. I can't tell you where I've been or what I've done, but know that I've always tried to be good like you taught me. If you're receiving this, it means I'm gone. I'm sorry I was away for so long. I hope one day they tell you what happened. Love, Joe._  
  
Amelia's tears blurred the pages that came next. She had no idea what Navier-Stokes was (after a conversation with a surprisingly young man named Charlie, she learned it was a previously unsolvable math problem and solving it was worth a million dollars), but she didn't care. The lines and lines of inexplicable math that were more squiggles and Greek letters than numbers were heartbreakingly familiar. Joe had always loved math, would sit at the kitchen table after school and babble to her about the newest coolest thing he'd learned in math that day. She'd never understood it, but she'd always enjoyed seeing him so lit up and animated about it, and for years she'd missed it. She'd missed  _him._  
  
Amelia sat down in front of the television - she'd been watching the mid-morning news when the doorbell rang - and flipped through the pages, running her hands over the smooth paper where her son's hands had been.  
  
And then, like a gift from heaven, she heard her son's voice.  
  
Amelia looked up, but the television was blurry. She swiped a hand over her face, and she listened to her son describe a suicide mission to fire his way into a ship and detonate a nuclear device to destroy the ship from the inside - along with himself - to save everyone on earth.  
  
It sounded like the plot from a bad sci-fi movie, but the newscaster looked practically gleeful as she talked about the leaked audio from an Air Force mission involving the recent fireball in the sky and subsequent Navy quarantine of San Francisco Bay.  
  
Amelia reached out, turned up the television, and listened. It was her son's voice, she'd know it anywhere, and the picture on display was definitely of her son, older than she'd ever seen him - and he looked so much like her father that she wanted to weep all over again - but the newscasters were saying the voice belonged to one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the United States Air Force, and he was a hero who'd been willing to sacrifice himself for the entire planet.  
  
John Sheppard. Joe's friend from college. The rich one, who'd been smooth and charming and a handsomer, more polished version of Joe. But his voice had never quite been a match for her son's, no matter how they'd liked to play up the twin angle.  
  
"Where do we go from here?" The newscaster was interviewing a bunch of talking heads, all so-called military and intelligence experts.  
  
One of them began rambling about how the American public had the right to know not only what threats they had faced but about the brave men and women who had protected them.  
  
Amelia reached for her phone. She was going to find her son, and if she had to, she would go straight to the top of the ladder to get him back.


End file.
